NARPM Conference in Cary, NC

February 17th 9:00 AM - 4:00 PM

Register with TPM @ the NARPM Conference and get a $50 coupon!

This Form was LIVE 6:00 AM February 17th and turned itself off at 10:00 PM that same day. If you meant to fill it out, or if you filled it out but didn't get the coupon, please send us a request for help from our Contact page and we will assist you.

Every tenant screening company has a rental application. We do too.

(to be added to your rental application signature page)
Protecting yourself from tenants starts with including some precise disclosure language in the rental application. Tenants must be told that you intend to investigate their background and may include residency, employment, military, government databases, personal and professional references, social media, character, records of attendance and earned degrees or certificates and more. You need to be point-blank and tell them that by executing the application they are authorizing you to not only check out the information they give you, but share said information to third parties you work with that have a legitimate right to it, plus, contribute to those databases your experience with the tenant. You must protect yourself. You need to cover yourself on many issues before the tenant moves in, during their stay and after they move out.

The consumer protection laws (Fair Credit Reporting Act) are designed to protect consumers (tenants) with regard to who has access to their information, as well as who we (the property manager) can share that information with. If you don’t get the tenant’s authorization to investigate (and pass on) their personal information you’ll expose yourself to both FCRA claims as well as civil claims for damages and attorney fees. You must protect yourself.

Once they’ve completed the application it’s impossible to go back and ask them to execute this special protection language so this language needs to be on the last page of the application, just before their signature line.

Note: In 2016 I was hired by the Atlanta law firm of Weissman Nowack Curry & Wilco as an expert witness in a federal discrimination case against a local property manager with this kind of language in their application. Because they protected themselves with language like this, it will be easy to get him off the hook in the claim as long as their practices match their qualifying guidelines.

To develop consistency and supervisory oversight in our qualifying procedures we developed a chart to identify who an application needs to go to in the office for review. We let assistant managers approve certain applications, managers another group, senior managers another and only the broker could approve certain applications. For example, we wouldn’t let an assistant property manager approve someone with a 500 credit score, a comfort pet, a past bankruptcy, a co-signer, a quick move in, multiple pets or a recent eviction without senior staff involvement. There were things only the broker could approve in our system, usually because they had a greater chance of developing some kind of conflict. We developed this internal tool to manage the application process and make sure the better trained staff had an opportunity to approve or deny the harder applications. As you grow your staff this tool becomes more and more important to your qualifying process.

There needs to be an enforceable document that lets the tenant know they are approved and lists the terms of the lease and who to contact. This identifies the start date, move-in date, rent, deposits, fees, utility companies and other critical data for their occupancy. It puts their deposit at risk and identifies what happens if they change their mind. If you get the lease signed immediately, you probably don’t need this. We don’t get the lease signed until 3-4 days before move-in so we use this to “lock them in” without having to sign the lease immediately. We purposely delay executing the lease because we’ve had some tenants request the lease in advance and back out over something they don’t like (fees, charges, etc). For us it is a 2-step process. The Official Notice of Approval commits them and gets the first month’s rent. Then, close to the move-in date when they are less likely to back out, we execute the lease.

Buy Package #1: Resident Sign Up Application Documents (use when qualifying residents) which includes documents 1-4. The price for buying each document individually would total $71.00, or you can purchase the complete package for $62.00 (Subscribers get an additional 20% off).